Craig LeHoullier is consumed by tomatoes. He has written two books about growing them: Epic Tomatoes and Growing Vegetables in Straw Bales: Easy Planting, Less Weeding, Early Harvests. He lectures about tomatoes at gardening conferences. He has been the Seed Savers Exchange tomato adviser for 30 years. He and his wife, Sue Angus-LeHoullier, founded Tomatopalooza, a tasting event […]
Update, Sept. 6, 2021: This piece was updated to reflect that Natasha Tretheway’s book Native Guard is a collection of poetry. Growing up in Leicester, Erica Abrams Locklear imagined becoming a pediatrician one day. She loved to read, though, and remembers enjoying Southern authors Jill McCorkle and Clyde Edgerton. But Abrams Locklear didn’t become aware […]
Asheville city government’s decision-making should happen in the sunlight. At least, that’s the principle Liz Harper brings to her work as the city’s public records officer. Anyone who has asked for public information about permit violations, purchase orders or police reports since October 2020 has been assisted by Harper. Until recently, Harper kept track of […]
Working in the National Park Service has taken Tracy Swartout all around the country. But in many ways, her new role as superintendent of the Blue Ridge Parkway, based at the service’s office in Asheville, is a homecoming. Swartout grew up in Columbia, S.C., and has many fond memories traveling along the park’s 469-mile route […]
The statute of limitations long ago expired on the small misdemeanor Phyllis Lang may or may not have committed as a teenage volunteer at the small library in her hometown of Elgin, S.C. “There was a locked case of books that were deemed not appropriate for the average audience — books like Marjorie Morningstar and […]
Certain activities are closely associated with Asheville: sampling local craft brews, tubing down the French Broad River, eating one’s own weight in barbecue. If Demp Bradford, president of the Asheville Buncombe Regional Sports Commission, has his way, professional sports will become quintessentially Asheville, too. Bradford, a native of the North Carolina Piedmont, became interested in […]
Many people who volunteer with the Peace Corps consider it a life-defining experience. Kareen Boncales is one of them. She served in Cameroon from 2009-11 in small enterprise development, teaching basic business skills to everyone from farmers to boutique owners. “I really admired that entrepreneurial spirit of turning challenges into opportunities,” she recalls. “I knew […]
Justin McVey of Horse Shoe looks at the world differently than do most people. A bird feeder and a trash can are a potential buffet for urban black bears scavenging residential properties in search of food. A dead deer on the side of the road might be roadkill — or an indication that disease is […]
Since he was a teenager in Charlotte, Mac Franklin knew what his life’s work would be. He began landscaping during high school and continued the career while studying art, industrial art and design at Appalachian State University. After college, Franklin moved west to work for a landscape architect in San Francisco and a nursery in […]
When Joshua Darty moved to Asheville in 2006 with a freshly minted forest management degree from N.C. State University, an open position at the city’s Parks and Recreation Department seemed like a potential fit. But when he showed up for his interview at 53 Birch St., he was in for a surprise. “I’m like, ‘This […]
In June 1995, a young lawyer named J. Calvin Hill parked his car in downtown Asheville and walked toward the Buncombe County Courthouse. Hill, who had been working for several years as a defense attorney in eastern North Carolina, had been recruited by the Buncombe public defender’s office. As he strolled to his job interview […]
